She Blinded Me With Science (2 page)

"The more alien parts you can play with a straight face, the better the pay. And if you
don't mind groupies going after you, that's an added bonus. Chicks just dig the pointed ears."
Dougie leered for about five seconds before his eyes rolled back in his head and he slowly slid
off his bar stool.

Kevyn sighed and propped his friend up. He really did like Dougie, so worldlywise
despite his relative youth at age forty-three. Well, he wouldn't get his diet cherry cola tonight.
Despite the accusations of his relatives, he was a very responsible and reliable Fae and someone
had to be the designated driver. Kevyn didn't need to get bombed and forget his troubles. He had
a place to spend the night and a possible long-term job, and a chance to get out of town. Life was
good.

Life sucked. Not just life in general, but life in particular on the SF convention
circuit.

Sophie sat in a dark corner of the lounge and scowled at the scantily clad girls wearing
twenty different costumes from as many movies. Did they have to be so dang skinny? What
happened to the proverbial "size twenty
Star Trek
fandom" she had heard about in jokes
for so many years? Skinny hips, skinny waists, long legs that looked good whether it was in
Classic Trek miniskirts or caveman furs or Elfquest tunics. And
shouldn't-they-fall-on-their-faces-from-all-that-weight bustlines.

She stuck out like a sore thumb because of her generous curves and lack of costume.
Sophie was tired of getting sneers, even when she cornered some costumed exhibitionist and said
she was doing research for her doctoral thesis. Everybody around her was too busy having fun to
sit still long enough to be interviewed, even for the sake of some immortality in an academic
paper. Even trading her blazer and skirt for a Gandalf T-shirt and jeans didn't help her blend in
any better or gain a measure of acceptance.

Trying to fit in at SF conventions was a waste of time and effort. Just like trying to live
down the long history of quacks, charlatans and lunatics in her family history. If her delusional
ancestors weren't locked up in asylums, they were burned at the stake as witches or run out of
town by people who considered them a threat to their children and their sanity.

The only thing that kept her from giving up was the thought of Jennifer Montcrief's glee
and triumph.

Moaning, Sophie massaged her scalp to try to ease her headache. She bowed her head,
propped herself up with her chin in her fist, and contemplated her untouched rum-and-Coke. Her
second for the evening. Even that old standby didn't help give her that floaty,
tomorrow-is-another-day feeling.

"Hey, baby, what're you doing, sitting back here in the dark?"

Sophie groaned and considered pretending to be asleep. Except her eyes were open. She
didn't want to see the wobbling, overweight, drunken idiot in a badly made costume who was
going to try to pick her up. If all the girls in fandom these days were anorexic, the guys were
Captain Tubby personified.

"Great ears," he added. "They look real. How d'ya do it?"

"Ears," she snarled. Then a moment later, Sophie burst out laughing. It figured, didn't it?
She kept her ears covered all the time out of habit. The first time she let her hair down, literally,
she finally got some acceptance.

He was probably too drunk to care that they were real ears.

Such was her life--and, as she had noted earlier, it sucked.

"Yeah, really great pickup line, huh?" the guy said, and slid into the booth facing her.
"It's been a rough weekend, let me tell you. Nice to find a girl who doesn't let it all hang out,
know what I mean?"

Sophie looked up at him and gasped. He was in great shape. His eyes weren't bloodshot,
he didn't smell like beer and he didn't need a corset under that trim STIV-style uniform. He had a
five o'clock shadow trying to peek out through his blue Andorean makeup, and he had taken off
the white wig and antennae, so his sweaty, salt-and-pepper hair showed.

"Dougie Jones," he said, holding out his hand to shake. "I'm with the theater
troupe."

"Sophie Hunter, doctoral researcher." She held out her hand and waited for him to laugh
or flee the booth as if she carried the Black Plague.

"Well, hell, no wonder you're not running around with a scorecard and trying to jump
everybody's bones." He mimed wiping sweat off his forehead and slouched in the booth. "Nice to
meet you, Doc."

Maybe, just maybe, her life didn't suck after all.

* * * *

Kevyn had been watching the curvy brunette for the last two hours, trying to decide just
what game she played. He liked it that she looked comfortable in jeans, sneakers and a
wine-colored T-shirt--not squeezed into an outfit that was mostly lace or faux leopard skin or a
miniskirt designed to leave nothing to the imagination. How did girls get around on those stilts
glued to their feet? The fact that they could still move with lightning speed and grab at
uncomfortable portions of an actor's anatomy proved some Humans possessed unconscious
magic.

Something about her made the tips of his ears tingle. It was a warning of some kind, a
gift from some social deviant ancestor who had made his living as an assassin and seduced every
Human princess he could get his hands on. Did she pretend disinterest to lure an actor into her
clutches? Or did she simply enjoy the flash and silliness of the convention from the
sidelines?

In other words, a sane person with a healthy sense of the ridiculous who hated looking
like a fool?

When Dougie wandered over to talk to her, Kevyn cursed himself for missing his
chance. His roommate said something, and she looked up.

Kevyn felt his stomach drop down into the toes of his costume boots.
She had
pointed ears.

That wasn't so unusual in this convention, except she had definitely been trying to cover
them up. Either she couldn't find the solvent to remove her costume ears, or they were real.

He panicked and shifted to invisible in knee-jerk self-defense. He didn't care who saw
him do it.

The lack of shrieks around him indicated that, wonder of wonders, no mini skirts had
spotted him in the shadows of the bar and made him the target of the hour.

The girl didn't react to his burst of magic, either.

Intriguing.

Despite himself, Kevyn wandered over to study her. He leaned against the post at the
end of the booth, where people normally hung their coats, and listened to her describe her
doctoral thesis to Dougie. He didn't know what was more amusing: Dougie's effort not to fall
asleep, or her utter seriousness about proving magic was real in a totally scientific manner.

After ten minutes, Kevyn wanted to run his fingertip down the graceful curve of her
perfect, seashell pink ears. Now he finally understood why his older brothers got that glazed look
in their eyes when they talked about a Fae woman's ears. Something about this girl--this mostly
Human girl, with enough Fae blood to give her pointed ears and make his own earpoints
tingle--caught his attention.

Touching Sophie Hunter would violate the whole reason for being invisible, and he
didn't want to scare her. The more he listened, the more he felt sorry for her. She drank just
enough rum to keep the cola from making her tipsy, and babbled to Dougie about all the strange
and unusual things that had happened to her at conventions. Dougie chimed in from time to time,
adding his own stories.

Kevyn decided to get out of there before he gave in to temptation and touched her. He
took two steps out into the hall and ran into a sword fight just starting to get off the ground.

Didn't these jokers read the rule about all weapons being peacebonded so no one could
draw them and cause harm?

* * * *

Usually it took four rum-and-Cokes before Sophie started hallucinating. Two just made
her nicely relaxed. For instance, when Mr. Tall-dark-and-tormented vanished from his seat near
the bar, she didn't even blink. She figured he was a figment of wishful thinking.

When he reappeared in the bar doorway, semi-transparent, she just smiled and kept
scribbling in her notebook, recording the silly story Dougie told her. Being a perpetual student,
she had the ability to look at one thing, listen to another, and write quite legibly without seeing
what her hand did. She watched Dream Guy wade into the sword fight out in the hallway, framed
in the lounge doorway. He snatched the swords the imbeciles waved around and yanked them
from their hands. The astonishment on the combatants' faces nearly made her giggle. Their
shrieks of anger and the filthy words they spilled made her gasp.

"What the hey?" Dougie turned around and stared, and other people in the lounge got up
to watch the battle.

The battle wasn't a hallucination. Maybe those swords that swung themselves into the
wall and broke weren't a hallucination, either.

But how could the transparent hunk who glared at the fighters be anything but a
hallucination? Nobody saw him but her. That was very evident when people didn't follow him as
he walked away.

"I only had two," she murmured.

Time to switch to something less prone to mess with her neurons. She muttered an
excuse to Dougie and got out of the booth. He didn't notice when she staggered out of the
lounge. Par for the course.

Two hours later, Sophie sat in the coffee shop, eating her second hot fudge sundae with
chocolate ice cream and extra chocolate sprinkles when Mr. Semi-Invisible walked in. She
barely recognized him, fully opaque now and dressed in jeans and polo shirt instead of his
costume. Especially with his dark, tangled curls hanging down around his face instead of brushed
back and tucked behind his pointed ears.

He stood in the doorway for a few seconds, looking around. She waited for the female
fans to mob him. The convention program book listed the TV and film credits of the actors, and
it didn't seem to matter to the fans that no one, including the Incredible Semi-Invisible Hunk, had
played any roles with actual names. The fact that this guy and his pals had spent time in front of
a camera made them celebrities.

Sophie's brain froze up when she realized he was looking right at her, and smiled. He
waved, and like an idiot, she waved back. Her hand froze, caught in mid-air, when he strode
down the aisle between the tables and sat down opposite her.

"Hi, Sophie."

"Uh-- Hi." She scrambled through her photographic memory for the first time in her life,
trying to remember his name. "Kevyn, right?" Why couldn't she remember his name right away,
with the weird spelling?

She guessed the common complaint of women everywhere was right. All that
testosterone hovering around him in a cloud did cause brain damage. In this case, her brain
damage and not his.

"Somebody's been studying the program book." He grinned and the warmth in his eyes
did funny things to the pit of her stomach, right where all the chocolate ice cream had come to
rest.

"I'm not in the program book, so how do you know my name?" she shot back.

"Dougie's my roommate. I saw you with him in the lounge and asked about you."

"Wondering why he was spending so much time with the--mundane?" She nearly
tripped over her tongue, using the mildly derogatory term for non-fan instead of 'loser,' as she
had originally meant to say.

Before Kevyn could respond, two girls squealed, dashed up to their table and spilled a
flood of questions. He autographed their program books and gave non-answers to their questions.
Sophie was mildly impressed that he didn't promise anything, when the girls clearly wanted
promises, but they didn't resist when he asked for some privacy. How did he do that? Before she
could ask, the waitress came to take Kevyn's order.

"One of those, please." He pointed at the remains of Sophie's sundae. "That is exactly
what I need."

The grin and wink he gave her, as if they shared some amusing secret, fried a few more
neurons. Before she could get her brain rebooted, two more fans came over to ask some
intelligent questions about special effects in the movies Kevyn had been in. Sophie decided she
enjoyed listening to him talk. He didn't talk down to the fans or pretend knowledge he didn't
have. He seemed glad to share information.

Oh, don't get all sappy about the guy,
she scolded herself.
So he's nice. So
what? He has to be after something, to spend time with you when he could be partying with a
bunch of girls whose IQs match their bra size.

Kevyn's audience took the hint when the waitress brought his hot fudge sundae, thanked
him, and went back to their table. Sophie watched him dig into the multiple layers of chocolate
like he hadn't eaten in weeks. What was his next move going to be?

Were his acting friends waiting outside, to jump in at the right moment? Sophie had
seen this particular game played out before. A gorgeous guy pretended interest in the brainy,
unattractive girl. As soon as he got the answers to the test or scored for whatever sick contest he
and his friends had created, everyone leaped out and yelled "Gotcha!" and ran away
laughing.

"Speaking of special effects," Sophie began. Kevyn mumbled through a mouthful of ice
cream and kept shoveling. "That was a pretty neat trick, breaking up that sword fight outside the
lounge."

Kevyn's yelp sprayed chocolate ice cream and hot fudge all over her T-shirt and the
table. He tried to leap to his feet, stumbled, and went down, hitting his forehead on the table
across the aisle.

Half the coffee shop occupants leaped to help him. Sophie calmly got to her feet, left a
tip for the waitress, and took her bill to the register. Everyone still seemed focused on Kevyn as
she paid it, and walked out. She walked through the long hallway where convention-goers talked
and laughed and waited to get into the dealers room and the dozen other rooms with
programming still running at nearly midnight. She took the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor,
swiped her keycard through the lock and got it to open on the first try. Her knees folded just
before she reached her bed. She managed to climb up onto the mattress before she quietly had a
mini nervous breakdown.